


Fin'lly home where I belong.

by anzu_brief



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: American Politics, Anal Sex, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Trailer, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Credits Scene, Captain America: The First Avenger, Depression, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Drinking, Hippies, Historical References, Homophobic Language, Idiots in Love, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Sex Is Fun, Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-19 04:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13696680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzu_brief/pseuds/anzu_brief
Summary: When the world ends, when the heroes die, Steve stands alone against an enemy he had no chance to overcome and prays to the God he no longer believes in for Bucky - for a chance to save him, to see him again. Miraculously, the Tessaract listens and makes his wish come true.Coming home from the war with a missing arm is hard shit. Bucky struggles to recover from the memories of the battlefield, to cope with his PTSD and to come to terms with his disability.  Steve tries to be supportive and to help Bucky as much as he can, all the while sorting out his own feelings and what Bucky’s kiss and last words meant to him.However, building a stable relationship with his best friend in a world where homosexuality is punishable by the law is not easy, and Steve knows his time is limited. One day someone will knock at their door and demand for Captain America to fight a war that Steve won’t necessary approve of, and he knows what he will do when that happens.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm supposed to be writing my Naruto fanfic, and I swear I haven't abandoned it - no by a long shot. But I watched the Black Panther in the cinema a couple of days ago (advantages of living in London), and this idea got into my brain. I just had to write it!
> 
> Don't worry; there are not spoilers in this fanfic. Yes, Bucky is awake like he is in the IW trailer, and that's all. I warn you, though; I don't have a beta to help with this story yet, so you are likely to find a few mistakes. I tried to check for misspellings as best as I could, but I'm sure I missed a few.

Steve had never felt as hopeless and scared as he felt now. In his thirty two years of life he had confronted more than his fair share of enemies, most of them a force to reckon with, and not once had he allowed fear to influence his decisions. Even at his lowest point, when depression assailed him and every day became a struggle to go on, Steve had not let fear overpower him.

As a child and as a young man, before awakening in a strange time and place and fighting to the death with the man he loved like a brother, Steve used to believe that God would never allow evil to prevail over good – that, no matter the sacrifices, good would always triumph at the end. Years later, after his faith in God had been shaken, Steve hanged on to the belief that as long as there were good, brave people willing to stand up for what was right, the world would be fine. Earth would be safe.

Now that belief lay dead on the ground as well, along with countless others.

In the space of five weeks most of these good, brave people had been slayed without mercy by the Devil himself, an immortal being came from space whose only purpose seemed to be bringing death and devastation to the planet.

Out of Steve’s former teammates, Vision was the first one to fall – after Thanos had ripped off the gem on his forehead. His death was followed by Wanda’s – whose ability to manipulate the gems had made her the biggest threat to Thanos. Tony was the next victim. Hulk and Thor fell soon after– and shockingly, in a futile effort to save his brother from certain death, Loki was killed as well.

Steve had been totally overpowered, forced to watch and unable to do anything as Thanos killed off his friends one by one. The only reason he survived that first confrontation with Thanos was that Thanos didn't bother to finish him off. Steve was not powerful enough to be deemed a threat by him, and so he was left in the battlefield, deadly wounded and unable to move, where Natasha had found him hours later – still breathing, if barely.

While Steve recovered, the U.N. and the W.S.C. had launched a combined attack against Thanos, but not even nuclear bombs could stop him. Several countries were wiped in the effort to take him out, to not avail.

Finally fully aware of how dangerous Thanos was, all the super-powered humans, heroes and villains alike, had teamed up together in a final desperate effort to take him out. Despite his status as a criminal, Steve had been asked to lead the group and he had accepted the responsibility, but not before warning each of them that he was in all probability leading them to their deaths.

The answer was always the same.

“We are death anyway”, they said. “We can at least _try_ to take the bastard out, for everyone’s sake.”

Steve did not feel the joy he had thought he would when T'Challa landed in the field with Bucky standing next him – both eager to join him in the fight against Thanos. Steve would have preferred if Bucky had remained frozen, as that would have given him a slim chance to survive the upcoming massacre.

Bucky was a stubborn son of bitch, though, and no matter what Steve said to him, he would not be persuaded to go back to Wakanda. As the days passed by, Steve slowly came to terms with his presence in the battlefield and he could not deny that it felt _good_ , fighting beside his best friend against a common (rightful) enemy. It was the way things were always supposed to be, and it gave him hope.

For a while there, as more than fifty heroes fought together against this Devil, it seemed as if they stood a chance. Thanos retreated and they pursued him. They fought, Thanos retreated again. It became a pattern. It kept their spirits high.

Nonetheless, every time they fought, someone from their side died. Sam, Nick, Antman. Hercules, Marvel Woman. Clint, Mantis, Black Panther. Star-Lord, Nebula, Shuri. Soon, it became obvious that Thanos was looking for something.

Meanwhile, Steve kept losing people in each confrontation.

Doctor Strange, War Machine.

Natasha.

Until the day that there were no more than a handful left.

Today they had followed Thanos through the Sahara desert to the Morocco’s coast line. The fight was being particularly brutal and Steve had already watched as three of his comrades were slayed. There were only four of them now and Steve knew that today was the day he would die.

Shockingly, the realization wasn’t as terrible as it had been once. Perhaps he had lost too many friends or watched too many good people die in awful ways. Slowly, the hopelessness and despair that had hunted him during the first weeks after Thano’s arrival had eased and Steve had grown numb to it all. Still, he could not forsake the people that were counting on him. His only hope was to take Thanos with him when he died. That was Steve’s plan – even though he had no idea how to make it work, yet.

If he could just figure out a way to do that, if he could do it before anyone else was killed, before Bucky was killed…

That was all he hoped for.

As the second assault against Thanos started, Bucky held him back for a moment.

“He’s looking for the cube,” his friend said, straight to the point.

“What?” Steve was too distracted by the battle – Peter had just launched an attack against Thanos’ eyes, using his web to blind him; Wasp and Sandman were covering his back and Thanos was infuriated by this tactic. Peter was seventeen – he should not be fighting at all. Sandman had a peculiar sense of humour but he was fireless, and Wasp was a nice lady – they didn’t deserve to die.

“The Tesseract!” Bucky clarified impatiently. “It’s close, I feel it.”

That was enough to bring Steve’s focus back to him. “You…?”

“They used it on me, back when I was captured – after Azzano. I don’t know what they did, but it was always close by, and it felt… It felt like now. The cube is here and Thanos wants it.”

Bucky had never talked about his time as a prisoner. Steve had rescued him – and there was not denying that he had been tortured or experimented on, at the very least, but Bucky had refused to talk about it. He became angry every time Steve brought up his time in captivity, so eventually Steve had ceased asking. But if Bucky said this now, Steve trusted him.

“We can’t let him have it.” The red skull had been bad enough. Imagining the things Thanos would do with the Tesseract, Steve shuddered. It wasn’t just Earth, but the whole universe that would be in danger.

“It’s too late for that,” Bucky stated as a matter of fact. His nose was bleeding, his right eye was black and swollen and there were cuts all along the right side of his face. The upper part of his flesh arm was badly bruised as well, evidence that his shoulder had been dislocated less than a day ago. “We are not strong enough, we were never strong enough.”

It angered Steve – his words, his wounds and the knowledge that Bucky was right, that Steve had not, would not be strong enough to protect him. “We can at least try!”

“We can,” Bucky agreed. “You can. You have to use it.”

“What?”

“The cube is powerful; you told me what it did to Schmidt. You can use it now. Use it to defeat Thanos. Use it to make it so Thanos never came to Earth.”

The idea sounded crazy. “Bucky, I don’t know how to use it. I don’t even know if it can be used!”

“Well, you can at least _try_.” If he weren’t so infuriated by it Steve would have laughed at having his own words thrown back to him. Bucky persevered. “It’s the only plan we’ve got. You know as well as I that we don’t stand a chance against Thanos.”

Steve knew it was true – he had known it for weeks, even though he had tried to shield himself from the truth. But what Bucky proposed…

His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. Steve turned his head towards the noise. Less than half a mile away, Peter Parker fell to the ground. One. Two. Three. Four. Five seconds ticked by. Peter did not rise to his feet.

He wouldn’t – never again.

Steve felt the taste of stomach bile rise to his mouth.

Peter…

No more than a boy…                                                       

Steve had failed him as he had failed everyone else.

“Steve!” Bucky seized him by the shoulder and squeezed his arm tightly – burying his fingers into the flesh of his shoulder until it hurt. The pain helped Steve to focus his mind. He blinked and looked at Bucky, who shouted, “It’s the only chance we’ve got!”

It may very well be, as crazy as it sounded, but Steve was not willing to lose someone else. “Then you do it!” he argued. “I’ll join the others. I’ll distract him. You find the damn thing.”

Bucky shook his head. “We both know that he’ll kill you the moment he realise what we’re doing. And I can’t let you die if I can help it.”

“And you think I can?” Steve shouted at him in aggravation. He had already watched Bucky die once and he had mourned him. Days later, he had thought he was joining him in death only to wake up in a foreign world where Bucky may as well never have existed. Steve had mourned him again. And again, after he found out that Bucky had survived, after all, but did not remember him (or himself).

Each time Steve lost him, it had felt like taking a knife to the heart. He could not go through that again.

“Please,” Bucky begged him – and the timbre in his voice was so familiar, so much like the Bucky before the war, that Steve’s heart skipped a beat. “I finally understand it now, you know? Before, I remembered. I remembered pretty quickly, actually. I remembered who you were, who I had been, and the things I had done for you – the things we’d done together. I remembered wanting nothing else but to go home, to crawl into my mother’s arms, to hide under my bed forever, and yet agreeing to stay, to kill and to fight a war with you – for you, for I could not bear to leave you alone. I remembered sliding down to that train – that crazy plan of yours – and picking up the shield. I remembered knowing I was gonna die, but if I could save you, if my dying made sure you survive, then that’s was what I was gonna do.”

“Bucky…”

It was terribly painful for Steve to hear him say such things. And he wished – oh, how he wished – that he had never asked Bucky to join him. He should have bid him goodbye in that pub in London and sent him home with his regards to his parents. Bucky would have lived a good life, the kind of life he deserved.

But back then, back then Steve hadn’t known what war truly meant, not yet, and he had been in awe of the things his new body could do. He had been over-confident and naïve – and the thought of being apart from Bucky for God knows how long had been too much to bear.

He had been so sure he would be able to keep his best friend alive and safe, that he hadn’t even considered the alternative. His arrogance has cost Bucky his life – and Steve had never forgiven himself for it.

“It’s alright, Steve,” Bucky absolved him, as if reading his thoughts. “For so long, I remembered what it was like to be me, what had pushed me to do those things – but I could not understand it. That’s why I run away from you, why I hid. I remembered I had loved you – you and only you. Since the day you stood up for me in the playground, when those kids were giving me shit ‘cause of my dad, because he was Jewish, even after I’d been mean to you the day before – you stood up for me. I fell for you then, and I knew I’d fucking love you until the day I die.”

“Bucky, I–.” Steve was lost for words. He did not know how to respond to such declaration. His heart was swollen with love and gratitude, but when he opened his mouth to give voice to his feelings, the words failed him completely.

Bucky’s eyes were shinning with life at he looked at Steve. They were so blue and so alive – so different now to how they had been after HYDRA.

The world was ending. The few allies they had left were dying as they had this heart to heart conversation. It was not the time, and yet –Steve thought to himself– if not now, when? Those were the questions that had tormented Steve for years, and if they were going to die, at least Bucky had right to know… “I loved you too, you know. More than I–. I’m so sorry I asked you to join me, during the war. It was so selfish of me. I never–”

“I am not sorry,” Bucky interrupted him. “You would have fallen from that train instead of me, so I’ll never be sorry,” he repeated, full of certainty. “But you didn’t love me the way I love you – you could not have. And perhaps that’s why I stay away as well. But now, now I finally _understand_ ,” he declared, his eyes bright with fire. “They took so much from me, Steve; no only my memories but my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions – everything that made me, _me_. And I finally earned it back. I understand now, why I did what I did. No–,” he shook his head, “–it’s more than that. I _feel_ it. I feel it now, like I did back then. And if I am to die, I want to die true to myself – to the man I was. That’s why you must to let me do this.”

Before Steve could think of an answer – because he was so incredibly happy that Bucky felt like himself again but he could not stand aside and watch him die, he just couldn’t, and they needed to find another way– Bucky’s metal hand grabbed his other shoulder and pulled his body forward until their faces were only a few inches away.

“Don’t feel sorry,” Bucky instructed him. “I trust you. Find that cube. Save the word. Be happy. I love you, Steve.”

It was not his words that silenced Steve, but what Bucky did right after.

Bucky lifted his head, just a few inches, and his mouth claimed Steve’s, crushing his lips in a hard, demanding kiss.

Surprise flared through Steve. He stood frozen in shock. His heart thumped, rattling his rib cage; his lungs stopped working. It was the first time a man kissed him – he faintly realised – and it was not much different from a woman’s kiss. It was more demanding – more aggressive. The stubble of his beard scratched the flesh around his mouth. And yet, it wasn’t _any_ man kissing him – it was Bucky. The man he loved like a brother. And Steve had no idea of what it meant – or how to react.

Keeping his mouth firmly on Steve’s, Bucky lifted his lips slightly, tracing Steve’s lips with his tongue, and then quickly pressed his tongue forward between his parted lips, kissing Steve passionately, with a burning fervour that could only be born from love, but built upon sordid decades of madness and despair. Bucky kissed Steve like that for several, long seconds.

Just before breaking away, Bucky bit Steve’s lower lip and pulled on it with his front teeth, hard.

Once.

Twice.

Then he let go.

Before Steve could think of what to say, Bucky took off towards the fight.

Steve watched Bucky as he run off – away from him, towards Thanos –, and he wanted nothing but to follow his best friend into battle; his heart, his brain and his guts screaming at him not to let Bucky face that Devil alone. But Bucky was right. As they were now, they did not stand a chance. If there was a way for him to defeat that bastard, as crazy as Bucky’s idea was… It was Steve’s duty to try. Even if that meant watching Bucky die a second time.

Steve began running. He had been in the presence of the Tesseract before and he allowed his guts instinct to guide him. In the beach, two miles away from the fight, there was what it looked like a crashed spaceship. Not far from it, Steve spied a blue light half buried in the sand. He raced for it.

Not far from him, at his back, he heard a terrible sound – half a scream, half a cry –, and he knew what it meant. His heart broke – but he did not stop running. If Thanos was running after him, after the Tesseract, Steve knew his time was severely limited.

The blue light intensified.

He was so closed now.

He could heart Thanos’ steps close behind him – and getting closer.

Now just a few feet away, Steve let his guts guided him once more. He jumped towards the Tesseract. His right hand grabbed it and his body rolled to the side in the sand. He had got it just in time. One second later would’ve been too late.

Steve had the Tesseract – but Thanos stood less than five feet away from him. Steve risked taking a look at him. The Devil was livid, roaring menacingly like an animal. Thanos aimed his fist towards him. Steve had the Tesseract… but he didn’t know how to use it. And if it Thanos had followed him here, it meant that Bucky–

Steve closed his eyes again. Tears rolled down his cheeks and his heart shattered to pieces. Alone and hopeless, two steps away from an enemy that he had not chance to overcome, Steve prayed to a God he no longer believed in, "Oh, God, please, God. Just give me a chance to save him. Please."

The next second, everything turned blue.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve opened his eyes in time to see the Red Skull dissolving into a beam of blue energy. He stood petrified as the cube burned through the plane and fell into the Atlantic Ocean. He thought he was dreaming at first.  _It had to be a dream._  Then he thought he was dead. He had died and he was paying some sort of penalty for his sins – forced to relive one of the worst days of his life over and over again.

A long time ago, a few months before the disaster with Ultron, Steve had asked Thor about his home, the Realm of Asgard, and about the mysteries of the universe. Among other things Thor had explained to him that after they died, mortal people went to The Realm of Hel, where the dead enjoyed eating, drinking, fighting and fucking all the while healing from the wounds inflicted upon them during their mortal lives. Eventually, the souls became fit to go back to Earth and began the cycle of life again.

Despite his friend’s certainty as he retold these events, Steve hadn’t been able to fully believe it. He had come to appreciate death as an eternal, dreamless sleep from which was impossible to wake up. The mind faded, the body turned to dust and all that was left of a person’s life were memories; memories that endured in the mind and heart of their loved ones.

Either way, the scene before him was wrong.  Against all reason, Steve was not in the Realm of Hel, nor in Heaven nor in Hell. His lungs worked, his heart was beating and every part of his body hurt as if someone had just beaten the shit out of him.

It could have been Thanos.

Or Schmidt.

As preposterous as that sounded.

“Captain Rogers? Captain Rogers, can you hear me?”

The voice from the radio caught his attention. Automatically, Steve walked towards the cockpit of the airplane where the radio was. And then…

A familiar voice.

 “Steve!? Steve, are you there!?”

Peggy.

Steve’s heart skipped at beat and that was the moment he realised with all certainty that he was not dreaming – because he could no longer remember Peggy’s voice, not the way it had sounded when she was young. Steve had tried several times, but each time he had failed to recreate it: the high timbre, the heave British intonation, the warmth that lurked behind the decisiveness.

“Steve!!!”

Peggy was calling for him now and  _it was her_ , Steve was sure of it, which could only mean that she was alive, that she was real, which of course meant… everything else was real as well.

He was really here.

Seventy three years in the past.

Steve’s mind went back to the last seconds of the fight against Thanos. Steve had found the Tesseract and he was holding it in his hands, but Thanos was standing mere feet away from him, ablaze with anger and unbeatable. Bucky had just died. Everyone else was dead. Steve was alone and he did not stand a chance, and he had wished–

He had wished for a chance to save him.

He had wished to save Bucky.

The Tesseract had brought him here; it was the only conceivable explanation. Bucky’s plan had worked. Thanos was gone – he would not come back to Earth for another seventy three years. And Steve could…

But he couldn’t, because Bucky had already fallen from that fucking train. And Steve needed to put this plane in the water. No matter how desperately he wanted to save Bucky from the tortures and derogations he would endure in the next seventy years, he could not sacrifice the life of millions of people, all of New York…

Bucky’s family lived in Brooklyn. Bucky would never forgive Steve if he let the bombs go off for the chance to rescue him. But he could not–

Steve could not leave him, no when he knew what that was waiting for him.

“Peggy, Peggy, are you there?”

Steve ran to the radio.

“Steve! Thank god!” Steve could tell by her voice that Peggy was terribly relieved to hear him answering back and he hated himself for what he was about to do. “Steve, I–”

“Peggy, listen, is Stark there?” he interrupted her.

“Howard?” she stammered; his curtness had startled her. Unfortunately, Steve had not time to be courteous; not while Bucky’s life hung upon a very slender thread. “No, he’s not here. I–”

“Listen, I don't have enough time,” he interjected again. “Schmidt is gone, but the autopilot is locked on for New York. I need to crash it in the Artic before the bombs go off.”

“Steve–”

“Don’t worry. I’m jumping off the plane right before it crashes,” he assured her, maneuverering his shield to wedge the controls down as he spoke.

It was risky – the shield could fall from its place at any moment and the control column would move up again, reverting course to New York. It was a risk he had not been willing to take the last time he had lived through this experience.

In spite of the insinuation of his Shield Psychologist (and he had turned out to be a Hydra minion anyway, so Steve was calling it bullshit,), he had not committed suicide when he put the plane in the water. Steve remembered that day with detailed clarity and he knew he had not wanted to die. He’d been tired and depressed and mourning Bucky, and at times it'd felt as if life would never made sense again, all that was true. But he had not wanted to die. He had wanted to take Peggy dancing, to witness the end of the war, to visit Bucky’s family and pay his respects to them – to let them know he owned Bucky his life.

Last time, Steve had done nothing else but his duty.

Last time, however, Bucky had been dead. Peggy had been in love with him but she was strong, strong enough to move on with her life. The commandos would be fine. Steve had been loved, but he hadn’t been  _needed_.

This time was different. This time, Bucky needed him.

And Steve could not let him down.

“I have less than two minutes,” he explained Peggy, all the while making sure that the shield would hold the controls column down once he abandoned the plane. “I’m sending you my coordinates. Tell Howard I’ll swim south in a straight line. I’m taking one of the parachutes with me to make it easier to find me.”

The idea had just occurred to him, but it might actually work.

Locating one person wearing a blue suit in the middle of the ocean would be very difficult, maybe impossible. In contrast, the parachute was white and large; if Steve opened it, it would make searching for him easier. In the back of his mind, he mourned for Google Maps and all the future technology that he hated after he had been introduced to it, but that would considerably increase his chances of survival now.

“I’d just sent you the coordinates, do you have them?”

“I have them,” Peggy answered after a pause.

“Good.” Steve stood up and began to walk towards the back of the plane. As he suspected, the gaps the Tessaract had burned through the plane were his best chance to get out of it. It would be a tight fit, but he could manage to slip through the holes.

Peggy’s voice spoke again from the cockpit, “Steve, good luck.”

Steve closed his eyes and he waited to the last moment, to make sure the plane didn’t change course. “I’ll see you soon, Pegg.” Then, he let himself fall.

* * *

 

As Steve had expected, the ocean water was freezing. Knowing it didn't prepare him to feel it, though. Going under the water felt like a hundred knives stabbing his body and his brain all over. The shock paralyzed him for a terrible long moment. After a few confusing seconds, he forced himself to swim to the surface, and then, to keep swimming.

Several hours passed by. Steve used the position of the sun to swim south, like he had told Peggy. His lungs laboured and his muscles burned with fatigue. Exhaustion dragged at him, but Steve refused to give up. If he died here, there would be no one left to recue Bucky. There would be no one to bring him back either, like Steve had done in the future, if he gave up now.

The temperatures dropped, the light diminished and day faded into night. Steve knew that Howard wouldn’t be able to find him now. If he wanted to live, he would need to make it to the morning.

Steve’s body was shaking, but he no longer felt cold. He simply lacked the strength to go on. He stopped swimming, just for a few moments – just long enough to regain his breath. But the moment he stopped, the waves threw him off course. He could not give up. He needed to keep swimming south; otherwise Howard wouldn’t be able to find him.

Bucky.

Steve thought of Bucky.

Bucky had endured. For seventy years, Bucky had endured tortures and degradations that would’ve broken any other men, and after surviving all that, when Steve had really needed him to, when he had put his life on the line, Bucky had come through for him.  Bucky had pulled him out of the river – Bucky had saved his life. Steve couldn’t let him down now. No after Bucky had died for him – again.

Steve had to keep swimming, somehow.

Feverish, Steve’s mind went back to Bucky’s last words for him, just before he had kissed him, shortly before he had run off to confront Thanos on his own, leaving Steve behind to find the Tessaract. Those words had been Bucky’s farewell, Steve understood that now. He still wasn’t sure what they meant.

What the kissed had meant.

But Steve could hear his friend’s voice…

_I fell for you._

_I knew I’d love until the day I die._

_…_ and Steve knew he could not let Bucky down. He had to keep swimming, even if it killed him.

Slowly, the darkness of the night faded away in taciturn agreement with the whistling breeze and the starts disappeared from view. Sunrise approached, Steve was no longer cold – he felt hot all over. He had not strength left, and it was only his stubborn determination and his desperate need to reach Bucky, to rescue his friend, that kept him going.

He didn’t know for how long.

Finally, something changed. Steve heard a familiar noise. He lifted his eyes to the sky. Over his head, a plane was flying. Howard had found him. He hoped so, anyway. The plane kept flying forward for half a minute but then turned back, having drastically reduced its speed. It reached Steve’s location, and then something was thrown down to him.

It was a rope. But Steve couldn’t– He was exhausted. He had not strength left. He had to, though. For Bucky. It was the only way to get into that plane, Steve’s only chance of rescuing Bucky. He had to climb it.

With shaking hands, Steve grabbed the rope. The little shit slipped through his fingers so he grabbed it again. Then, he clutched it with his other hand. After securing his grip on the rope, he began climbing. It was a slow process. He could not feel it, but he was pretty sure several of his fingers were bleeding. He did not check – he simply kept climbing.

After a few minutes, Steve felt two strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him up. He crashed into the floor. He had made it. He had reached the airplane. His head felt so, so heavy. Steve looked up – a familiar face that he failed to identify was looking down at him. Steve knew he was safe. He was among friends.

He could go to rescue Bucky now.

It was Steve’s last thought before everything turned black.

* * *

 

Steve regained consciousness a few times during his sickness, however, all he could remember from those occasions was feeling extremely hot all over, as if someone had set his body on fire, and a sharp pain in his chest that became even more painful every time he took a breath. Usually, he could sense one or more persons close to him. Once, he remembered, he had even tried to talk to them – only, no words had come.

Steve knew this time would be different because he no longer felt hot and he could breathe easily. He blinked a couple of times. His throat was slightly sore and his tongue felt shrivelled. His mouth was dry but he could still taste his saliva (and the taste was disgusting). His stomach growled; he was famished, which was not a huge shock - he hadn’t ingested anything for however long he'd been unconscious. He could tell that he wasn’t completely recovered yet, but it wasn’t anything that a good meal and a few more hours of rest wouldn’t heal.

“Steve?”

Turning towards the voice, Steve saw Peggy sitting on an old, wooden chair next to his bed. She just as painfully beautiful as he remembered, even though her eyes looked tired and her curls were dishevelled.

She had been sitting next to him for as long as he was unconsciousness, he suspected, and the realization made Steve felt incredibly cherished but also sad and guilty. He had missed his chance to build a life with Peggy seventy three years ago, and being here again, in the past, wouldn’t change that.

Trying would only make things more painful for both of them.

“Hi, Peggs,” he greeted her with a small smile, because in spite of everything he was still so terrible happy so see her again – young, beautiful and fierce, with her mind intact and a whole life in front of her. “How long did I sleep?”

“You took nine days. The doctors weren’t sure you would wake up at first.” Her voice didn’t tremble as she said this, but Steve could see how much the possibility of losing him had affected her.

“You need something more than a swim in the Artic to take down Captain America,” he jested intending to cheer her up; but his attempt at a joke fell flat, neither of them in a mood for levity. “Where are we?” He asked, serious again.

“In an underground hospital in London,” she answered immediately. “It’s safe here, from the bombs.”

“Is Howard here?”

Peggy shook her head. “He stayed until he doctors said you’d be okay, but then he had to go somewhere. I think he is working in a secret project for the war. He seemed conflicted, but couldn’t talk about it.”

With a heavy heart, Steve realised that he knew which secret project Howard was working on. A few weeks after he woke up from the ice, Steve had learned everything about the Manhattan Project. He had searched in Google for images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and had questioned what madness could have led the government of his country to authorize the indiscriminate killing of two hundred thousand civilians – innocent men, women and children.

And yet, he reflected, without the bombs that had forced Japan to surrender in the summer of 1945, how many more American and European soldiers would’ve had to die in the battlefield to end the conflict? How many more widows, orphans, and bereaved parents would have been left to mourn their love ones?

Steve knew in his heart that he himself could have never given the order, but was left wondering if giving the order had been right thing to do after all.

Knowing that Howard was involved in the project, Steve could neither judge him nor condemn him – but he did feel a strong compassion for his friend, and he wondered if his participation in the Manhattan Project had played an important role in turning the jovial man he knew, into the stern, negligent father that Tony resented so much.

Regardless of that, Steve needed to focus on the important thing.

“I need to borrow his plane,” he told Peggy.

“His airplane?” The tone of her voice and the expression of her features made obvious that it was not what Peggy was expecting to hear. “Steve, I understand you want to go back to the front, but I don’t think you realise how close were came to losing you. You need rest before you can go, much less, fly anywhere.”

“I’m not talking about the Front – no yet, anyway. First I need to go back to the Alps,” he explained. “I need to look for Bucky.”

“Bucky? His body, you mean?”

Steve could see how much his request confused her and how hard she tried not to show it. He knew he had to be careful with his wording, otherwise Peggy would think the fever had damaged his brain. “No. Yes–. I don’t know. I think he might be alive.”

This declaration confused her even more, and she needed a few seconds before she came up with answer. “I… I know how much he meant to you, Steve, but Bucky… He fell two hundred feet from a fast-speed train,” she told him gently. “You told me there was no way he had survived that fall.”

“I didn’t actually see him fall,” Steve lied. “He might have fallen to the railway line. And even if he didn’t, if he is really dead, I need to find his body. I didn’t search for it before because we had to stop Schmidt – and I did that. But now…”

“Now there is still a war going on,” she reminded him. “Every day, hundreds of people die at the front. You could be a great help to them.”

“I know. And I intend to. But I need to look for him first. I know it might not make sense to you, but I will never be able to move on with my life if I don’t do everything in my power to find him.” Steve hated himself for using her feelings for him against her, but it was the only way. “I’m asking you, Peggy. Please.”

Peggy sighed in defeat. “Very well,” she surrendered to his plea. “I just… I just don’t want to see you in pain if you  _do_  find his body. Or worse yet, if you don’t. It’s been almost three weeks since… and the snow– It will be very difficult to find anything, even for you.”

Steve shared those concerns; the length of time that had already passed and the cold weather would complicate his search, but Steve  _knew_  that Bucky was alive, that the Russians had found him, and so he would find him.

“Thank you, Peggs,” Steve thanked her from the bottom of his heart. He did not know what he had done to earn the love of this wonderful woman, but he knew he didn’t deserve her.

Peggy dismissed his gratitude. “Two conditions, Steve. First, you remain in this bed until Howard returns with his airplane. And second, you take a radio with you and keep in contact with us. Deal?”

Steve didn’t waste time thinking about it.

“Deal.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, how is it going? Thank you for your comments and kudos last chapter. I’m very invested in this story right now (I barely think about anything else when I’m awake), so it’s very lovely to see such a beautiful reaction from all of you.
> 
> This chapter, like the last, is unbeta-d, so you are all warned. Having said that, if someone were willing to beta the next chapter for me, that’d be amazing. I worked with betas before, and they’ve always done a marvellous job improving the quality of my stories. Just leave me a comment or drop me an email and I’ll get in contact with you (rebeca16.zgz‘at’gmail‘dot’com).
> 
> Thank you!

Despite having promised Peggy to keep the radio on, after the first few days of searching had yielded no results, Steve knew he was going to be ordered to come back to London very soon. Before than happened, he did the only thing he could do: he shut down the damn radio and went off the rails. If the USA army wished to judge him as a deserter for this action, Steve would surrender himself and accept the verdict – but not before he rescued Bucky and took him to safety.

It took Steve three days to find a small Russian base stationed in the Alps. He questioned the Russian soldiers about the soldier they had found dying in the snow weeks before, silently grateful for his determination to learn Russian back in the days when he was still chasing Bucky across the world. It would have been impossible to communicate with them otherwise.

The Russians were friendly enough. Steve could see mistrust on their eyes, especially after his accent had betrayed him as an American soldier, but they shared the same enemy and their hatred of the nazis surpassed by far the wariness they felt towards him. Once Steve explained to them why exactly he was here, their wary expressions faded and their eyes were filled with understanding. They told him how one of their own had found an injured soldier at the bottom of a cliff purely by chance.

The Russian private had been scouting the area when he found a delirious man half covered in snow; the injured man was covered in dried blood, his elbow, forearm and wrist bent at very unnatural angles. At first the soldier had mistaken him for dead but as he approached him, the man breathing and the sound of his teeth chattering revealed he was still alive, if barely.

The soldier had brought Bucky back to the base and they had treated his injury the best they could with the few first aid items they had. They expected him to die anyway and had meant to make his last hours as comfortable as possible.

But Bucky did not die.

He survived.

After a week not only was Bucky alive – much to soldiers’ astonishment –, but his condition had improved enough for him to regain consciousness at times. He even began to speak. He asked for Steve, the soldiers told him. Sometimes he would repeat his name, rank and serial number but most of time he called for someone named Steve.

Once it had become obvious that he was in fact not dying, the Russians arranged for him to be transport to the motherland, where he could receive proper treatment for his wound in a field hospital. The soldiers gave Steve the coordinates of the town where they had taken Bucky, near the Hungarian frontline, and wished him luck for him and his friend.

Steve thanked them sincerely for all they had done for Bucky and left.

Making his way to Hungary from the Alps wasn’t easy. He hijacked a train which took him near the Austrian-Hungarian frontier, slipped through the enemy lines in the dark of the night and finally made his way to the town in question without arising any suspicions. His accented Russian betrayed him as a foreigner, but there were enough Polish, Ukrainian and Romanian soldiers around that he could easily pass for one of them. The euphoria and confusion that preceded the end of the war made the task of infiltrating the town much easier.

Once inside the town, Steve stole a Red Army uniform which had previously belonged to a Sargent and used it to sneak into the hospital. But Bucky wasn’t there.

Some of the nurses remembered him, though, the handsome American soldier who could not speak any Russian. He had been in the hospital for almost two weeks, they told him; and left about eighteen days ago.

The doctor had to perform surgery to amputate his left arm mere hours after he first arrived but he had recovered extraordinarily quickly; by the last days of his stay, he was well enough to stand about on his own for a few minutes. He was always quiet, though. He treated them respectfully but did not engage them. One of the nurses mentioned nightmares, how he never slept much and when he did, he woke up screaming; an older nurse commented how she didn’t think he had come to terms with the loss of his arm.

Steve could not stop the sobs that shook his body as he listened to their recollection of Bucky. It was too much; another failure. He had failed to save Bucky from Thanos; he had failed to save Bucky from falling out of the train and he was failing him again now. He was never good enough – not when it truly mattered.

Steve had not cried when he was recovered from the ice. He had not cried after visiting Peggy in the nurse house for the first time, when she had barely remembered him; he had not cried after watching proof of what Hydra had done to Bucky for seventy years. He had not cried after Bucky decided that going back in the ice was the safer choice for him, never mind leaving Steve alone in a world that no longer accepted him, and he had not cried after he watched Thanos beating the life out of everyone he knew and loved, including Bucky.

In this instance, though, after having just failed  _again_ , Steve was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably and he could not stop.

The nurses looked at him with pity in their eyes. Minutes later, after Steve was able to speak again he asked them if they knew where Bucky had been taken, but none of them did. Steve thought he would break down again. He was truly lost now. He did not know where else to look. Such was his state of despair, that it was purely a miracle when he noticed the man watching him.

How long had the man been watching? More importantly: why?

It was easier to regain control of himself now that Steve had a new objective; a possible lead. Steve breathed deeply. He thanked the nurses and left the hospital without putting up the effort to look inconspicuous. He let the man followed him into one of the back-allies. It was easy to dodge the bullet when the man fired at him from the mouth of the alley and it was even easier to overpower him.

Torturing the man for information wasn’t easy by any means but Steve went through with it anyway. First he knocked down all his teeth to prevent the man from swallowing the cyanide pill he had hidden in his molar tooth and when that failed to make him talk, Steve proceeded to cut off his fingers systematically, one fingertip at a time, until the man broke down and gave Steve the location he was looking for – a Hydra base in Ukraine, hidden among the Carpathian Mountains.

After getting the information he needed, Steve snapped the man’s neck. He hesitated only for a few moments before undressing the body, dumping it inside a trash container and putting on the dead man uniform.  Now posing as a Captain of the Red Army, Steve stole an army transport and used it to drive all the way to Ukraine.

These actions didn’t trouble Steve half as much as once would have.

He was fortunate. The territories between Hungary and Ukraine had already been secured under Russian command and the nearest frontline was hundreds of miles away. It made the journey quicker. Eight and a half hours later Steve reached the Carpathian Mountains; he ditched the car and continued to the designated location on foot.

It took Steve another two days and one night to reach the designated location. The base was underground but the entrance wasn’t hidden. It was obvious that they weren’t expecting visitors and especially no any enemy scouts. It made sense, with the war still going on. Bigger fishes to fry and all that.

Perhaps it was this lack of forewarning that made Steve throw caution to the winds, aim his gun to the door lock and empty his gun in the lock. Perhaps he was just that desperate. Whatever the case, he did not think ahead; he acted. He kicked the door wide open and broke the neck of the first unlucky bastard who came at him. Many more followed.

Screams of panic and shouts of men trying to take him down could be heard everywhere. Some of them had guns but that wasn’t a problem. Steve had lost his shield in the plane crash but he did need it now. Something in his mind had snapped.

The agony and despair which had taken hold of Steve for every day he failed to find Bucky had finally pushed him beyond his breaking point; or perhaps he hadn’t recovered completely from his near death experience in the Arctic waters or from the shock of being here again, seventy five years in the past, forced to relive a mockery of his death (or what he had thought to be his death, at the time).

Chances were it was all that and much more.

It was Natasha’s silent tears as blood pooled out of her mouth and her body went limp, her life slipping away; it was the memory of her green, beautiful eyes – eyes which had been full of wonder and care and mischief just minutes before… but that, as Steve looked at them, became empty and still and devoid of life.

It was the image of Peter falling off the sky – a boy of sixteen with his whole life in front of him, young enough that he should’ve had no business in a battlefield. It was Thanos’ mirth and laughter as he squeezed the life out Tony – and Steve hadn’t even had the chance to apologize to him in person before that happened.

It was Thor’s cry as he watched his brother being murdered in front of his eyes.

It was Wanda and Vision and T-Chala.

It was Bucky.

Bucky’s kiss.

Bucky’s last words.                           

Steve had made a conscious effort not to think about any of it as he searched for Bucky. He couldn’t afford distractions. He could not afford mistakes. He could not afford to remember. And yet, those images were at the forefront of his mind as he snapped the neck of every Hydra agent he came across, even the ones that surrendered their arms and begged for mercy.

Steve did not hear those men pleas, and later, he wouldn’t even remember killing them. He wouldn’t remember making his way to the medical wing, either, or smashing the door with his fists. The image that would forever remained frozen in his memory is this: Bucky, naked; strapped to a metal table with tubes and needles connected to his neck, his right arm and his crotch, tubes which were carrying various types of liquids to and from his body; black cables connecting his skull to several machines; gruesome, half- healed scars carved along his torso; left arm missing.

Steve froze. He stood right there, mesmerized by the broken body of man better than he; he could not tell for how long.

The madness that had taken hold on of mind just moments before disappeared. Slowly, Steve approached Bucky. Bucky’s eyes were closed and if Steve focused only on the shade of his eyelids and the pulse throbbing along his temple, he could pretend Bucky was merely asleep; that war and everything that came after wasn’t real and Bucky was just resting after a long at work in the apartment they both had shared in Brooklyn.

The fantasy was so real, so  _easy_ , that Steve could almost believe it and ignore everything else. Steve lifted his hand to caress Bucky’s cheek, if only to reassure himself that he had found him; that whatever nightmare had been going on it was over now. Bucky’s face was warm to the touch. Steve’s fingertips had barely made contact when a frightful scream escaped Bucky’s lips, a sound of such raw, inarticulate horror that Steve, despite fighting more wars that he could count, had never heard something similar.

The screaming didn’t stop and Bucky’s body began to shake with such ferocity that Steve feared the needles still attached to his flesh would be ripped apart. Nevertheless, he dared not to touch him to hold him still. After a few seconds, Steve began to distinguish some words between the endless cries.

It was mostly pleas for mercy. “No! No! Please!” Bucky’s eyes were open but he wasn’t seeing. He was living inside his nightmares, reliving whatever torture he had been subjected to for the last several days. “No more! Please, no more! Please!”

It broke Steve’s heart in way he didn’t believe could be broken. Today wasn’t the first time he rescued Bucky from the enemy’s hands, but seeing him like this… vulnerable, in pain, frightened out of his mind. It made it so much worse than ever before.

“Bucky, it’s me,” Steve talked to him very gently, praying that there were enough of Bucky left to understand. “It’s Steve. I’ve come for you. You are safe, I promise.”

His words had not the intended effect, but the opposite. Bucky struggle even more than before and his shaking became frantic.  “NO!” He shouted. “It’s no real, it’s no real!” It was worse than his hysterical pleas of mercy; there was an echo of madness that could be heard on his voice now and it scared Steve more than anything else had before.

What had they done to him?

What were they trying to do, that the mention of Steve’s name was enough to push Bucky towards the edge of madness?

Steve did not want to know.

He didn’t have time to know.

He had to reach Bucky, any way at all.

“It is me, Bucky. I’m here. I’m real. I’m not ever leaving you again,” he swore.

Bucky’s eyes were slightly more focused than before; his gaze found Steve but there was not recognition or trust in his eyes when he looked at him and he laughed at his vow. The echo of his laughter would hunt Steve for years to come. It was a laugh born from bitterness, resignation and pain. It was the laugh of a man who had already given up; the laugh of a dead man.

“Bucky, I swear to you that it’s me.”

“I don’t believe you. You can’t make me. I will never believe you,” for the first time, something akin to shone in his vibrant blue eyes. “I will not kill for you,” he stated. Then, as if aware of the mistake he had done, terror clouded his gaze again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Please, kill me. Please let me die. Please!”

Steve had never felt as helplessness as he felt now; so enraged. But he could not focus on himself right now. There would be time for that later. There would be time for nightmares, time for tears and time to puke his guts out by reliving this memory over and over. Right now Bucky was his priority and he needed to make him believe, he needed to calm him down before his injuries–

Bucky’d been tortured. He was badly hurt. His body could collapse and–                     

“I swear to you that it’s me. We have known each other since we were children. The first week of school we disliked each other. You called me a rightful prick, remember? But then, the next day I stood up for you when Evans was giving you shit because of your dad. He punched me and broke one of my baby teeth – would’ve beating the shit out of me if you hadn’t kicked in in the balls. We became best friends ever since. Do you remember, Bucky? It’s me. It’s Steve”

For a moment, Steve would’ve sworn that he saw an ounce of recognition in Bucky’s gaze; perhaps it was there; or perhaps he was mistaken. It didn’t last. A moment later, Bucky had closed his eyes and begun muttering to himself “no real, no real” over and over again. It was disheartening and sad and Steve did know what else to do. How to prove him–.

“God, Bucky. I’m so sorry they did this to you,” he cried, the weight of a guilt that had been crashing him for years clear in his voice. “It’s me. I swear it is me this time. You need to believe me. I need you, Buck. I can’t do it without you.” Steve’s next action wasn’t premeditated, and later, when he had the time to analysed the scene over and over, he won’t understand what reasons led him to do it. The possibility hadn’t even crossed Steve’s mind before his lips found Bucky’s.

It wasn’t a romantic kiss by any means and there wasn’t anything remotely sexual about it, either. But it was a kiss: brief, gentle, wet… and Steve put his whole heart into it. Seconds later, when they broke apart, the words poured out from his lips… “I love you.”

Unintentional as they might have been, they were the truest words that Steve had spoken in a very long time (or was it his whole life?). Ramifications aside, Steve didn’t regret them. Could never; because Bucky blinked once and then twice and then he looked at Steve and he  _saw_  him. “Steve?” He asked; Steve could tell he was scared because his voice barely a whisper.

“Yes, Bucky. I’m here,” he told him. “I’m taking you home. You will never have to kill again, I promise.”

It was a promise Steve intended to keep, no matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? I hope you enjoyed it!! I know that we all miss Bucky but I really want to focus on Steve for a couple of chapters. I think it’s important to establish a background for him, to show how his confusion and his desperation to find his friend.
> 
> Next chapter, Steve will finally find Bucky – even though some things might not go as he’d like them to. And then, in chapter four, will jump head first to the Stucky relationship, even if they are only trying to be friends as first. Surviving war is never easy, so before I write any romance I really want to focus on the psychology of the characters.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I’ll see you soon!

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? Despite how much I love Steve and Bucky I really didn’t mean to write a CA fanfic. I wanted to finish my Naruto fanfic and then jump to write my first original novel – considering that I have been working on the plot since last summer. But lately I have struggling to write anything at all, and after watching TBP I felt as if inspiration had stroked me in the face. I just had to write it!
> 
> In any case, it will be a short fanfic; maybe ten chapters and around 40 000 thousand words. I have the next three chapters ready, so I’ll publish them soon if I see that people are interested. 
> 
> As always, staying true to the characters means a lot to me, so I’ll try to write as realistically as possible. This is going to be the outline for the plot:
> 
> Even though he is no longer the WS, coming home from the war with a missing arm is hard shit – so first, Steve and Bucky will be struggling to recover from the war and their PTSD, and to come to terms with Bucky’s disability. Next, Steve will have to sort out his feelings and what Bucky’s kiss and last words meant to him, and then figure out a way to build a stable relationship with his best friend in a world where homosexuality is punishable by the law. Lastly, as the years pass by, many people will want to use Captain America to fight wars that he doesn’t necessary approve of, so we’ll see how Steve deals with that.
> 
> So, what do you think? I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about this chapter and the general outline of the fic? Is it worth a go?  
> Do let me know and thank you for reading!
> 
> Anzu.


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